“Here in West Virginia, you know a thing or two about rough roads to the top of the mountain,” she told supporters at a victory rally in the capital Charleston.

Clinton said the Mountain State victory made her “more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to make their voices heard.”

She also reiterated her earlier calls to seat party delegates from the Michigan and Florida contests that were punished for holding early primaries – a move decried by some as an attempt to “move the goal posts” in the race for delegates in the nominating contest.

Despite trailing in pledged delegates and super delegates with just five contests left, Clinton played up her list of previous victories on Tuesday night. “The White House is won in the swing states, and I am winning the swing states,” she said, making her case that Obama’s trouble connecting with older, white, working-class voters like those in West Virginia will be a liability for Democrats in the general election.

“This isn’t new news,” Amy Walter, editor-in-chief of The Hotline, told the Online NewsHour Tuesday night. “Hillary Clinton does better among the demographics of West Virginia. At this point, Barack Obama has not proven to Democrats that he can carry this group of voters. I don’t know that he’s ever going to do that. The reality is he will win the nomination without having won a majority of the traditional Democratic voters.”

Walter said it was important to watch how Clinton portrayed the West Virginia win.

“The danger for her right now is to try to oversell her win here, or to look as if her remarks are actually focused on what divides the Democrats,” she said.

Clinton won at least 15 of the 28 delegates at stake on Tuesday, with 13 more to be allocated, according to initial Associated Press tallies.

Regardless of the margin of victory in West Virginia, Obama still picked up more support this week, with nearly 30 super delegates deciding to back him, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, an Obama supporter, said Tuesday evening on MSNBC.

The focus now shifts to a new round of contests in Kentucky and Oregon. The math continues to favor Obama, who could declare victory in the Democratic race as soon as next week’s primary in Oregon is over. As in West Virginia, Clinton is expected to do well in the May 20 Kentucky contest.

Stu Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report told the Online NewsHour that Clinton’s victory could help her raise funds and solicit super delegate support, but it doesn’t alter the fundamental aspects of the race.

“She can go to contributors and supporters and say, ‘See, I still win. He can’t win these kinds of voters,'” Rothenberg said. “The reality is that he still has a significant lead in delegates and the popular vote, and she can’t catch him in either.”

Clinton used her victory speech Tuesday night – as she has done in recent primaries – to solicit campaign donations on her Web site. The AP reported Tuesday that her campaign is more than $20 million in debt.

U.S. Rep. Nick Joe Rahall, an Obama supporter who represents West Virginia’s southern coalfields, said Obama has always faced an uphill battle against Clinton in the state.

“He will be very, very competitive in West Virginia this fall,” the super delegate said on MSNBC.

Nearly two-thirds of West Virginia voters picked the economy from three choices as the most important issue facing the country in exit polling, the AP reported. About one in five picked the Iraq war, followed closely by health care.

Obama has kept his focus on the Oregon primary and to the general election campaign against Republican Sen. John McCain, but the West Virginia defeat underscored his weakness among blue collar voters who could be pivotal in the fall.

“This is our chance to build a new majority of Democrats and independents and Republicans who know that four more years of George Bush just won’t do,” Obama said in Missouri, which looms as a battleground state in November.

“This is our moment to turn the page on the divisions and distractions that pass for politics in Washington,” he added, according to the AP.

Clinton is expected to spend Wednesday in Washington then make travel to South Dakota and California on Thursday before spending Friday and Saturday in Oregon. Her husband will campaign for her Wednesday in South Dakota and Montana before traveling to Kentucky on Thursday.

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